decision quickly, it will be granted functioning immunity to donald trump. they will do exactly what liz cheney warned against in that terrific op-ed, permit a defendant with a lot of power and money to manipulate the justice system to ensure he never sees accountability. when donald trump was kicked off the ballot in colorado, the supreme court only needed one month to issue a unanimous decision reversing and allowing him to appear. if the court takes more than a month for this case, then i think we'll know there's a double standard going on. >> great seeing you. i thank you and i thank you for the privilege of your time. that wraps up the hour for me. "deadline white house" starts right now. hi, everyone. welcome to monday. it's 4:00 in new york. the case is about criminal conspiracy. that's how the prosecution presented its case in the first

ever criminal trial of an american expresident started the day. opening statements this morning in a downtown manhattan courthouse in donald j. trump's criminal case. they made the opening statements to the jury and the six alternates. it is about a conspiracy of the expresident and his allies to interfere in the 2016 election. the negative stories about donald trump. the attorney for the prosecution, matthew spoke about a 2015 meeting in trump tower between donald trump, his former fixer, michael cohen, and a man named david. the negative stories about donald trump's relationships with women was allegedly hashed. it is a scheme commonly referred to as catch and kill.

he said in the wake of the release of the "access hollywood" tape which was a political earthquake, michael cohen paid former adult film star stormy daniels $130,000 to keep her alleged affair with donald trump silent. according to reporting from the courtroom, he said this. at trump's direction, mike cohen negotiated a deal to buy miss daniels' story in order to prevent american voters from learning that information before election day. trump would later go on to reimburse michael cohen and try to cover up with the payment through michael cohen was for, leading to the expresident's indictment last year on 34 counts of falsifying business records. donald trump has pleaded not guilty and has denied a relationship with stormy daniels. today the prosecution argued trump's willingness to go through that trouble shows how

important it was for him to hide the true nature of michael cohen's illegal payment to stormy daniels. and the overall election conspiracy that they had launched. on the other side, he argued that trump was not involved covering up these payments and a catch and kill strategy isn't illegal any way. he went on to say, i have a spoiler alert. there is nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. it's called democracy. interesting word choice. in the last few minutes of court, the first witness took the stand. it was the trump ally and former "national enquirer," he spoke of a practice he called, checkbook journalism. he said it is where the media outlet would pay for stories. he will be back on the stand to continue his testimony when court resumes tomorrow.

all of this in a clash in the country. "the new york times" writes this. america has grown accustomed to seeing trump smash through its customs and now witnessing a phenomenon that is the first in its 248 years of our history. presidents have been impeached, they've been driven from office, rejected at the polls. trump is about to be the first to have his fate decided not just by voters but by 12 citizens in a jury box. we begin with our most favorite reporters and friends. all of them back in the courthouse and at the table. for folks who were inside today, msnbc legal correspondent lisa ruben and new york investigative times who talked us there you the story, suzanne craig also joining us. former deputy assistant attorney

general harry is here to keep us honest. there is such a lack of words to describe new wow moments for trump. when i started seeing the notes from inside the courtroom about the opening statements, i stopped. i was on the street. i stopped. i gasped and i read all of them. it is so hard to believe that this is now something that has been swirling around in our politics. you cover that better than anyone. it is now as the times is pointing out, being put in front of jurors. >> in facts still coming to light. we've been talking about it for years. yet us as journalists and the public is still learning the basic facts. david pecker walking inside the courthouse as donald trump gazed over. we don't know if they've seen each other since 2017. trump had become president and the district attorney's office is already outlining that they have evidence that he went to

the house for a thank you dinner, right? to thank him for his efforts in 2015 and 2016. let's say -- >> catch and kill, tomato, to , tomato. this is going to be a story of how far a political candidate for the highest office in america can go to win the presidency. right? he got to the point here where it took legal action eight years later to get to the point to force some basic details about an effort that donald trump allegedly engaged in to keep damaging stories from the american public and the american electorate. 42,000 votes was the difference in 2016 in three major states. that story could have very well impacted the future of, the future of america. >> an extraordinarily important point. in as much as i feel like i've lived 11 lives since 2016, we

are right back there with a very divided country. they now have probably a much more distinct and different acceptance of the facts than they did even in '16. the election expected to be close. we don't know if it will bear out. this idea that we're learning new information. what did you learn today that you didn't know before? >> the fact that there were the phone call on october 26th allegedly between michael cohen and donald trump, and then right after that, michael cohen goes to the bank, sets up the account. the very next day he goes and transfers that $130,000. donald trump up through 2018 was denying that he knew about the $130,000 payment. so if the prosecution is actually able to corroborate that donald trump was aware, well then donald trump, while a sitting president of the united states, was lying to the american public about what he knew. and there is the part where the, you can file lawsuits all you

want. we're 197 days from another presidential election. if somebody sees what donald trump was allegedly able to get away with, right? why not challenge the system again? and that is what will be coming out through the evidence and the testimony of others including those closest to donald trump. >> vaughn just laid out the prism through which we've sought to cover all these issues. the jury will decide if there's criminalality-on a reasonable doubt. and they are sorted. until some ways, technical. it's conduct, in other ways, they're so smutty, they're painfully obvious. michael cohen didn't run for president. michael cohen went to jail. it feels like that is a basic topic sentence under which a lot of these witnesses will be

supporting that story and that plot with their testimony. >> right. i think the idea is to almost not quite extract michael cohen but to build the evidence around him. he will probably come at the end in terms of of a witness. even today, i'm still struck by the new information that came out. we'll have narrators throughout. we heard about text messages that went back and forthwith the "national enquirer" when they went out to see karen mcdougal, one of the women who had a relationship with donald trump. they were trying to confirm if the story was true. there was an election night, a pledge that went back and for the between one of the lawyers involved that was representing karen mcdougal. we'll see a lot of that come through. and david pecker was not on the stand for very long. but just hearing the details that we got, the idea that they

would, if a story, reporters were given about $10,000 to get that story. and i wasn't clear if that included payment to somebody or expenses and payment. but anything above that, he would have to sign off on it. what that told me was the payments that went to karen mcdougal, to stormy daniels, were unusual. they were high. even the one related to the doorman which was $30,000. these were extraordinarily high payments. we'll hear more details from david pecker about how unusual these payments were. so that sort of information is now coming out. and i think every day, we'll hear, the devil will be in the details on all of this. >> tell me, david pecker was the first witness but there was some other business. can you describe that scene for us? david pecker? he's sort of launched a million names. but the man himself, the trump ally is so valued that trump

held a continuer for him. catch and kill, he had a different name for it. checkbook journalism. can you walk me through it? >> he comes in and he walks up to the stand and he has a huge grin on his face. he seemed very approachable, he seemed calm. he sat down. he gave his name. and some of the first questions were, they wanted to establish his phone number. what his cell phone number was at the time. he seemed very at ease and approachable. he was very likable and i suspect he will play well with the jury. that was my real takeaway. and i know lisa had some other observations that we've talked about. >> my big takeaway from david, i agree that he was very friendly and jovial. i was joking wasn't with her during the break that he had big grandpa energy. >> a million covers of the national end "enquirer," i'm wondering what mom wants big grandpa showing their kid the

"national enquirer." >> he was a gentler person than we were expecting. what he wasn't was rehearsed. and joshua was trying to get clear answers to some of the foundational questions like how does checkbook journalism work. how do you develop a source? he was talking about the underbelly of tabloid journalism. it is a very different universe than our universes. >> sometimes. >> hotel workers, people who work at dry cleaners, people who work at limousine companies. hearing those details -- >> and you imagine them handing out, the reporters have $100 bills in their pocket. he didn't say this but the idea that you're giving them money to get these stories. that means you're probably handing $100 or $200 or $500 to a door man. that he had that level of detail. and will it was interesting. he said the metric that matters, weekly, it was the sales. the only thing that mattered was the cover. and this is going to come out,

too. we'll start hearing about the stories that caught and killed the stories that donald trump planted and the favorable ones about donald trump that he pushed forward. but he's had covers about ben carson has been brought up, about the fact he was -- >> ted cruz. >> yeah. ted cruz. we'll probably hear details about potentially about how much the issues sold but how much money went into getting those covers together. >> in terms of laying out the onus of a crime. what does the prosecution want from david pecker? >> the prosecution wants him to establish the conspiracy. the unholy trinity of trump, michael cohen and david pecker. to vaughn's point about unspoken, unknown details, according to prosecutes today, it was trump who invited david pecker to come to this meeting at trump tower in 2015. they were joined by michael cohen there. when we've seen that meeting described and public filings, it

comes across really differently. they say there was a meeting between cohen and pecker and a third member of the trump campaign. we know from our colleague tom winters reporting in 2018 -- >> do we have that? okay. we're, we went back and we found, it actually circulated on social media. tom winter is a pro's pro and probably the kind of reporter that lives in both worlds. that does talk to those kinds of sources that know where people move and with whom they move. let me show you that report about that meeting and who was in it. >> the first discussion of this so-called catch and kill come up in august 2015. so the "wall street journal" reported back in november and nbc news has now confirmed that in fact the other campaign official in the room is the guy at the head of the campaign himself. donald trump. >> so that was established

through nbc reporting and others in 2018. explain why that is important and the characterization, the trump telling, people that know trump know he's such a maniac go with the details. he cast a cabinet. he didn't like john bolton's mustache. they have this alternate myth that he somehow floats around and doesn't know who is in his office. this was his meeting. >> yes. and he's micromanagerial to the core. and the legal import is to slow that donald trump had knowledge and intent to influence the 2016 election all along through the "national enquirer," to bury stories about him, to accentuate his positives and write damaging stories about his rivals like ted cruz and ben carson. you played this portion of todd blanch's opening when he said, i have a spoiler alert. it's not a crime to influence elections. it's called democracy. that's like saying, i have a spoiler alert.

it's not a crime to lie. it's called the first amendment. except that there are instances in which lying is a crime and there are also instance there's which nondisclosure agreements can be criminal. where they are entered into for the purpose of unlawful campaign contributions or individual contributions. that's why michael cohen went to jail. not because ndas are criminal but because of the purpose to which those ndas were put. >> what struck me is that, i know a lot has been said. trump has access to excellent lawyers and by all accounts has a couple defending him in this case as he should. it seemed once again as lisa is saying a political argument. i understand you're trying to persuade 12 people to come to your side. but it didn't seem that they were going to dispute all the facts. they were just going to dispute what the definition of a crime was. >> well, that's exactly right.

this is where the political, the significance of this trial is. the political and really do come apart. it seemed to me that he was trying to make the argument that trump was clean as a whistle. did nothing bad. and that will be very problematic once, for example, stormy daniels or karen mcdougal take the stand. you might have played this differently. you might say yes, he's a jerk but not a criminal. and instead, perhaps at the behest of the client, they are actually taking the tack of, nothing could be, everything he did was clean as could be. and that's just going to be very, very hard to substantiate. and the sort of significance of pecker is that all these things we know very sort of in a sketchy way become vivid and real and bring home, and i think it will be extremely hard for trump to try to disavow the entire corpus that the d.a. is

building. that's, i think, the task they've taken upon themselves. >> so our viewers are so steeped in all of this. i want to dive into the evidence at this point. and the "access hollywood" tape, we covered this. a transcript has been permitted. let me show you some sound. the jury will not hear it. but i believe some of the transcript was already read into the record. here's some of the access hollywood tape. >> i'm automatically attracted to them. i just start kissing them. when you're a tar, they let you do it. you can do anything. grab them by the [ bleep ] you can do anything. >> so that language, that belief by donald trump, which he actually reiterated in the e. jean carroll case. he believes it's been true for 1 million years in fact, and he

believes it today, will be known by the jury. what is the significance of that coming into the story the prosecution is telling today? >> that in addition to looking guilty of a crime, and there is a technical issue at the heart of it. he is going to look like a jerk and a sleaze ball and somebody they want to convict. and that is what is happening with the other witnesses as well. and if he really tries to, and by the way, how is he going to do it if he doesn't testify? if he really tries to stake the claim that he did nothing at all, he never had sex with stormy daniels or karen mcdougal, he will look like a liar. all three of those things. and they'll enter the jury room -- also, they are playing very aggressive with the judge. and i think we can anticipate some hard moments for trump in front of the jury. you put all those together when they enter the jury room, they are already inclined to construe

evidence against him. he is making himself out to be unlikable and not credible in addition to potentially cale. >> an extraordinary opening act. we'll read you more from each side's opening statements. we'll talk more about the evidence that i feel like we've all become so familiar with. we'll ask our courthouse watchers to pull again what was new and what we expect to be new in the coming days. a lot more about trump's relationship with the first witness. david pecker. through the course of the testimony, we'll talk to someone who had an up-close and personal relationship and the catch and kill scheme. the former executive editor of the "national enquirer" will be here. he has a lot to say and we can't wait to hear it. plus hour, damaging it could be the trump's presidential

campaign as a man who is used to being in control has so very little of it in the courtroom. the first criminal trial against donald trump continues. against donald trump continues

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did you know about the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? >> you'll have to ask michael cohen. michael is my attorney and you'll have to ask michael. >> so again, we're going on what trump says publicly which is always dicey. he lies the way the rest of us breathe.

what he seem to be saying to his supporters, which isn't irrelevant, that's what he would like them to say, all he did was pay a lawyer. as we know from the reporting, that's not what he did at all. talk about what is in the public record? what do we know? what do we know from the federal investigation that led to michael cohen going to jail? what do we know from what's already in the public record? >> the story from the "wall street journal" that first wrote on the daniels $130,000 payment from cohen came out in 2018. that's why that was in april of 2018 he denied knowing it. he put out some tweets a month later suggesting that maybe he was familiar to a certain extent but it was only because michael cohen was supposed to deal with thing like this and it was a known piece of their relationship. but then you fast forward to that's when the summer, everything collapsed between donald trump and michael cohen. and it was that year that michael cohen pled guilty to

campaign finance violations, among other things. ultimately served prison time and that's where we got some of the nuggets from his sentencing hearing in which michael cohen was not only testifying and pleading guilty on his own behalf but there was a nonprosecution agreement that david pecker and american media signed with the department of justice granting them immunity so they were able to testify and provide details of what was ongoing without speaking publicly about it and without the federal government actually telling the american public exactly word for word what david pecker actually -- >> and what did we learn from that? >> that's where we learned about the 2015 meeting that took place between michael cohen, david pecker, and the other individual from the trump campaign, and that's where we became familiar with the karen mcdougal involvement. that $150,000 payment was paid before the stormy daniels payment. and initially what is different

from stormy daniels, is that karen mcdougal, american media did buy the rights to her story. and donald trump and michael cohen, they never actually reimbursed american media for that $150,000 payment. when it came to stormy daniels, american media gives michael cohen a phone call of cohen secures the $130,000 payment. donald trump agrees to reimburse him. that's the difference between throws two stories. >> that came up today and it was wrapped around the axis of trump's frugality. >> they were talking about, when michael cohen got repaid, he didn't just get paid for the $130,000 that he paid stormy daniels. he got paid $420,000. and the prosecution was making the point, trump is known for his frugality. it's not like the trump organization has ever paid double for anything. and yet, they paid this guy $420,000. why? they paid him $420,000 because it was that important to donald trump that michael cohen keep his mouth shut and that this

story never see the light of day. that everybody understood what the payments were for, and that cohen and weisselberg concocted this scheme. not only through cohen's work but they have weisselberg's handwriting on the business that michael cohen set up to pay stormy daniels. they say that's how they're going to worm weisselberg who will not be at this trial, mark my words, into this story. >> you were saying something in the break about how what we know, the reason there was so much new even to the three of hue are so steeped in it, is because the last body to investigate this was donald trump's own justice department. specifically, the southern district of new york. they prosecuted michael cohen and the sentencing haergs, that's the closest we got to the facts established by donald trump's justice department about trump's role. his individual one. an unindicted co-conspirator.

even that document leaves a lot out. >> and there were several moments. talking about the prosecution agreement. there's a cohen sentencing memorandum. the information that is the charging document for michael cohen. in all of those instances, there's an effort to downplay trump's own culpability even by not talking about him. the example is that cohen and pecker met with another individual in trump's campaign who we know full well is trump. that's because of the pressure placed on the southern district of new york by main justice. all the while, folks were saying, doj, are you okay? not knowing that jeff berman was fighting to the last moment with folks very senior in trump's justice department to try to get the story to be told in as truthful a way as prosecutors wanted it to be. >> blinking in morse code. it didn't do much at the time. let the history books write it however they want.

a lot of this, if there was not a criminal trial, it might never have been known to the public and the voters. >> another interesting thing if it come out, michael cohen for all of this period was a salaried employee of the trump organization. we learned that today it was mentioned in the openings, "the new york times" in 2020, a lot of tax information and employment records. and we could see he was a salaried employee. he was being paid a w-2. why did they need to pay him this extra money if he's already on staff? it's not unheard of. you can get a bonus. then you're issued a 1099 form. none of that appears in the tax records. it was brought up today that he was actually a salaried employee during all of this. seemingly there is no reason to pay him all this extra money and it there will be some explaining. >> the other thing that seems likely to come up is the moment. if you work in politics, you'll never forget where you were when the "access hollywood" tape came

out. reince priebus who would go on to become trump's first chief of staff was. in debate. they're all in debate prep. you can say if i'm getting it wrong. they're in debate prep when the time breaks. i understand hope hicks comes in and shows it to everybody. the first thing is trump talking about himself in the third person. the thing that takes the longest is to go upstairs and tell melania. the conversation in the room is it's over. can we flip the ticket? the political moment at which he caught and kill and lied about who paid for it and who failed to do any of the proper documents for one's catch and kill expenses, if that's a thing, is a moment where he thought his campaign was over. >> yeah. >> mike pence. >> what did mike pence say? >> i was at a hotdog place in ohio with mike pence.

we were put on the bus. his events the next day was canceled in wisconsin. the big question is donald trump going to lead the ticket or will mike pence lead the ticket? there were talks about whether donald trump would continue on or whether mike pence would lead. days later michael cohen gets a phone call from the national enquire per stormy daniels has her own story of the alleged affair. and then donald trump the prosecution alleges directed her to be paid off. and for an arrangement to be struck. and he tried to avoid the prosecution alleges, for more than two weeks, actually executing on that. seeing if they could make it to election day without having to pay her $130,000. at the end of october, the prosecution lines up, is that michael cohen called donald trump and said we're getting pressure. we have to make this happen. the prosecution alleges that donald trump at that point at the end of october that, okay,

do the $130,000 payment. i'll reimburse you. >> the other point about the access hollywood tape is hope hicks. hope hicks was contacted by the "washington post" which attached a transcript of the hollywood access tape. there is been a lot of discussion about what is hope hicks going to testify about? probably the importance of that moment and why it was that paying off stormy daniels was actually essential. the tape was that explosive. and even though the prosecution wanted to play the tape and they didn't get to, hearing it today in the words of matthew colangelo who i will describe as a cerebral, quiet type of prosecutor, was just as damning. do you want to larry the "access hollywood" tapes out of the voice of someone normal and calm and polite? no. it was almost cringier to hear it from him than to hear the reporting. >> a quick last word.

there is what the prosecution alleges. justice department's own justice department, donald trump's own justice department established these facts. >> yeah. 100%. we've been dancing around a little bit, michael cohen. why is hope hicks so important? she corroborates a really important point that he made. and any statement he made can be brought in. pecker first. he will corroborate where cohen will go. cohen is a necessary witness for them but a problematic one. i suspect they'll put him in the middle. they've called him a tour guide. he is the one guy who tell the whole story. but they are very carefully corroborating aspects of the story through very credible witnesses like hope hicks. and that's a very large part of the strategy. especially since you saw in the defense opening that a large part of their strategy is to try to trash michael cohen.

>> thank you very much for starting us off. there's so much. stick around for the hour up next for us, we'll go deep inside the catch and kill campaign at the heart of this criminal trial. the number two person at the "national enquirer" now unshackled by a nondisclosure agreement and the very public details being reveal in open court. court. my name is caron and i'm from brooklyn. i work for the city of new york as a police administrator. i oversee approximately 20 people and my memory just has to be sharp. and i realized, my memory was just changing. i did my own research and i decided to give prevagen a try. my memory became much sharper. i remembered more! i've been taking prevagen for four years now. it's a life-changer. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. since my citi custom cash® card automatically adjusts to earn me more cash back in my top eligible category...

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prosecutors today drilled down on exactly what the expresident's fears or concerns were of what the stormy daniels and karen mcdougal stories would do to his 2016 presidential campaign. something they're sure to ask david pecker when he returns to the stand tomorrow morning. our next guest worked as the number two in david pecker's newsroom at the national end "enquirer" where story were bought and sometimes they were bought to be buried. the catch and kill scheme that's at the heart of trump's indictment which he said brought him to tears. the former executive editor writing in the new york "time" magazine said this, it revealed to me that i had been managing a newsroom with improvised explosive devices planted everywhere. the secret deal made at trump tower when pecker told michael cohen he would act as the, quote, eyes and ears. the hush money payoffs, the plot

to cover stories about trump's rivals. a scheme to influence the 2016 election. and pecker's testimony, quote, will in all likelihood be revealing some of the same information they tried to intimidate me into with holding. joining us now, the former executive editor with american media inc. he's now a special correspondent with the hollywood reporter. it's so nice to get to talk to you. i've seen your interviews. i've read what you've written. let me hear what you thought today as you saw your old boss take the witness stand. >> it was very surreal, nicole. i've not seen david pecker since i left in the summer of 2017. to see him walk into the courtroom today after all these years, he looked very different to the man i remember. he was frail. he was walking slower. when he got on the witness

stand, he seemed to sort of look out of place. he didn't know where he was. there was a moment where he was asked the location of ami and he stumbled. he couldn't recall. it's 4 new york plaza at the corner of broad street. he was a very different bloke than the one, this fearful figure who created this paranoid, toxic newsroom. a very different person. i looked at him at one point and i thought, he reminds me of my late father. he was 71 when he passed. and david pecker is now 72. so it was a completely surreal, to be in that courtroom today and to hear a very short period of his testimony. we'll hear more tomorrow. very different in how he was walking and how he was moving and how he was talking. very surreal. >> what does he know? >> well, i mean, he knows a lot.

and this is why he'll be the star witness of this case. and why the prosecution will be relying on him. he can really set the table here. going back tom meeting at trump tower in 2015, august of 2015, two months after donald trump goes down the escalator. where they have this meeting, it's michael cohen and trump and david pecker and where emhe'll be the eyes and ears of the campaign. my organization that i used to work for, ami, will purchase negative stories off the market and run negative stories about your rivals. which is something that at the time i did not thing deal had been made when i'm there as the executive editor. and week after week we're running these hit pieces about trump's rivals. we're running propaganda in favor of trump. but david pecker could really act as a tour guide for the jury

as to some of the meetings and the conversations that were going on with people like keith davidson, the lawyer and the fixer. close to dylan howe, very close to the person i worked for, involved with stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. he can provide a lot of details about that. >> what is your understanding of the part that is alleged to be criminal? what do you know now? i'm not suggesting you knew at the time. but what do you know now about how the money flowed and trump directing it? >> it is obvious now that there was this agreement. this scheme to influence the election which dates back to that meeting at trump tower. and as a result of that, there were these hush money payoffs. the first one that i was witness to was, in 2015, he contacted our tip line and he said he had

a story about donald trump, a love child. we mounted an operation to try to stand that story up. and before we could really get too far into the reporting moves, we had conducted a polygraph on dino, on the door man, which he passed. having that that, he was passing to what he heard a rumor and we had photos in hand of the love child and also, of the woman who was alleged to have the affair. the order came down to stand down the reporting and he was paid $30,000 by david pecker. >> is there more that we don't know about donald trump? >> well, that's why i'm here. i'm here to see if there's anything more. i think truth be told, everything that is going on in terms of the catch and kill deals, the hush money payments, to my knowledge has come out in public domain thanks to the great work of journalists at the "wall street journal," "the new

york times," the associated press. i don't expect any further revelations in terms of, there was another payoff, another woman. what i am looking for here is some of the more details about how this operation went down that i didn't see live in real-time. for instance, today, i heard for the first time about a text message that was communicated between keith davidson, who was the lawyer here, who i mentioned before. and to dylan howard on the night of the election where he texted him and said what have we done? details like that, yeah, that i hope to hear more of. >> what is the answer? so this is, keith texted dylan howard and said what have we done? in your view, what did they do? >> well, i mean, a number of key figures here, firstly, david pecker with trump, with michael cohen, with dylan howard, with

keith davidson, with election interference. this is something i wrote about in my "new york times" piece. core to this case is election interference. it is this group of individuals coming together, creating a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. how did they do that? by purchasing negative information off the margaret. that's the catch and kill. the stuff that gets a lot of attention. but also what went on was a well-orchestrated machine which was the "national enquirer" on news stands throughout the country in every walmart, every airport. that real estate is money can't buy that real estate. and then week after week we were running stories negative to trump's rivals. >> your point, and i'm dating myself, i grew up going to the grocery store with my mother and that is what you stare at for the 20 minutes, ten minutes, it's so important.

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2020 a lawyer representing me wrote a strongly worded letter in response. arguing that the information i shared was in the public interest and in some cases was of profound national importance. the letter stopped. no suits have been filed. three years after leaving the building for the last time i finally felt free of the place. when did you -- do you remember a story or a news cycle or a ted cruz -- i mean, was there a moment where you thought it's more than just a relationship, it's more -- the enquirer endorses for the first time in its history, they endorsed donald trump for president. was there a moment or was it this escalating influence campaign on the part of trump? >> yeah, i guess there wasn't one moment. there were several. i still remember when dylan howard told me he had flown out to california to meet with a woman that had a credible story in his mind, a woman who had an affair with donald trump. and i was excited.

you know, it was a big scoop. it was the kind of story i came to the "enquirer" to break and i expected him to say this is what i need your help with so we can get this published, this is when we're going to break it. and instead he said david pecker has made the decision to buy the story and bury it to protect trump. and i thought in what world are we? what is going on? and that came off the back of months of these crazed covers. and before that the payment. i guess the breaking point for me was the week leading up to the election as i detail in the piece on the tuesday before we, you know, had purchased for thousands of dollars these e-mails which were supposedly from italian intelligence that were between huma and hillary. we had to get them madly translated on deadline. i had to arrange for two

translators. it was absolute and utter madness. to the point that i just thought this place is so corrupted and my career is going to be finished because of it. >> wow. >> lachlan, question for you. when we go back to the republican primary in earlier 2016, there were stories the district attorney's office is prepared to present, stories that were also a part of this scheme against marco rubio, ben carson, ted cruz. what were those newsroom conversations look like and did those come in the form of directives? what were the origins of those stories that you guys at such a consequential time, ted cruz it was a one-on-one match-up at that point, that you guys in the newsroom won't and ultimately executed on those stories? >> yeah, look, there was a pattern that went on here. as a candidate was up in the polls, we were running a hit piece about them. and some of these pieces would come from the land of infowars as i would walk by dylan howard's office and see him watching alex jones or doing

crosses to'll aex jones. others would come from sites like gateway pundit. others would be produced from a cache of documents that were brought up from a.m.i.'s boca raton offices. there wasn't sort of one driving source of them. but certainly when i pushed back -- i remember saying to dylan howard, you know, our core readership here are women, are hispanics, are gays. this is not the type of material that is going to move the newsstand, which as david pecker said today that was the all-important -- the newsstand covers. there wasn't sort of one genesis of all this material but it was coming in so many different directions. >> lachlan, i just first want to say thank you for sharing your story. it's incredible and it's great to see you. i have two questions. i'm wondering what it was like for you when you finally left the "enquirer," and then tell us what it was like when you read the indictment and all the

pieces sort of fell together. >> thanks, sue. i felt like i got out of a cult when i left a.m.i. you know, it was -- i remember booking a flight to europe and it was like going clear. i was in berlin and i never wanted to hear the words david pecker or dylan howard or a.m.i. but i also thought my journalism career was, you know, basically over. who was going to hire anyone that was connected to what was going on here? and i'm very lucky that several years on that's two jobs ago now. you know, i've been with the daily beast and now i'm with the "hollywood reporter." and to your point there, sue, reading the indictment, i was actually down here and it was a moment because in the weeks leading up to it we'd heard stormy daniels, stormy daniels, stormy daniels. i thought if stormy daniels is in this indictment karen has to be here too, and i was just over there actually reading it on my iphone. i talk about this in the piece.

and then i see dino the doorman is there. it was like a reunion tour of all these payments. and then crucially was that meeting, the meeting in 2015 is talked about in the indictment. and i did become overcome -- was overcome by emotion because everything that i was whispering late at night to friends in bars, conspiratrial saying there's something going on here and they were saying to me lachs you need to just chill out, it's not like there's a big conspiracy here to throw the election. well, it turns out there was actually a lot more to that than i appreciated at the time. so that moment to me down here was incredibly emotional because it just proved to me everything i thought for all those years was correct. >> yeah, there is a thing that trump world does where they make you think it's you, not them. and i've been covering him for nine years. my experience is that it's always them. it just takes a minute for it to

come out. you are so uniquely situated to talk us through what's going to happen on the witness stand. i hope we can call on you again, lachlan. >> most definitely. thanks for having me. >> lachlan cartwright, vaughn hillyard, sue craig, an embarrassment of brilliant riches. thank you so much for spending time with us. thank you for being here for the whole hour, you guys. thank you. i'm sure trials won't cooperate every day, but today the schedule was in our favor. we have much more coverage, like two more hours' worth of today's opening statements. we'll preview the long, long list of key witnesses still in our future who will be making their way to the stand in the coming days and weeks, testifying day after day in front of the jury and now criminal defendant donald j. trump. the next hour of "deadline: white house" starts after a very short break. don't go anywhere. short break. don't go anywhe.er hi. i use febreze fade defy plug. and i use this. febreze has a microchip to control scent release so it smells first-day fresh for 50 days. 50 days!? and its refill reminder light means i'll never miss a day of freshness.

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hi again, everyone. it's now 5:00 in new york. throughout his 77 years here on earth donald trump has sought to control the message, to mold public perception, to shape the way people see him and experience him. he lied about his wealth. he lied about the 2020 election. his booking in fulton county, georgia clocked him at 6'3", 215 pounds. mystifyingly. nearly 30 pounds lighter than his last white house physical, which was always sort of questionable in and of itself. and while yes, he's been punished for some of those things including a $350 million penalty in the civil fraud trial, trump has always been able to shape his own narrative, to tell his own story. until today. that's because the chilly manhattan courtroom in which trump now spends his days, awake or otherwise, is not in his control at all. and for all his threats, all his

efforts at intimidation, this is foreign territory to the disgraced ex-president, entirely immune to his particular brand of bloviating and misrepresentation. where only one thing really matters. the truth. today opening statements began in that historic election interference and hush money trial in new york city. attorneys for trump and for the manhattan district attorney sought to frame the cases they're prepared to make in front of the jury. while the defense framed trump -- tried to frame trump as a sympathetic figure, somehow separate from michael cohen's payments to stormy daniels, the prosecution laid the facts of the case, which really aren't in much dispute, out for the jury. matthew colangelo, a lawyer on alvin bragg's team, suggested this. quote, we'll never know, and it does not matter, if this conspiracy was a difference maker in the close election. as our colleague lisa rubin reported from inside the courthouse, the prosecution appears ready to provide

evidence of how concerned trump's campaign was at the time and how stormy daniels' lawyer, keith davidson, texted david pecker, the former publisher of the "national enquirer," on election night and wrote this. quote, what have we done? colangelo insisted this was a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up designed to hide important information from the american voter, to ensure that such embarrassing details would never, ever, ever see the light of day. of course they did, and here we are years later. possibly on the verge of accountability. definitely on the cusp of another face-off between donald trump and joe biden. again, donald trump, though, has no choice about this. he is forced to sit there in his own trial listening to you will aof the testimony as lawyers go through his past in excruciating detail. stripped of his ability to shape his own narrative, it is getting easier and easier to imagine trump, to see him as what he is,

a criminal defendant, charged with some pretty serious offenses. it's the topic of a new ad from the republican voters against donald trump. watch. >> i was wondering if you guys are hiring right now. >> i was thinking of applying for a job. >> i was thinking about applying for a job here. i'm currently facing 88 felonies. >> for retention of classified information. >> do you think -- >> trying to overturn the 2020 election. >> falsifying business records. >> i was wondering if that was going to be a problem. e a probl. >> they're going to do a background check. >> yeah. >> that's the only -- >> so probably not? >> yeah. >> do you guys hire people that sexually assault other people or -- >> no. >> we want a full background. >> no, we don't. >> okay. >> donald trump based on that ad and in reality here on earth one probably wouldn't be able to get a job at a mall.

david axelrod summed it up quite eloquently in the "the atlantic" today, "as trump sits and watches the criminal trial he hoped to avoid unfold, he must know that a potential reckoning he has spent a lifetime eluding could be coming. he has been reduced to a criminal defendant in a courtroom where someone else has absolute power and the rules very definitely apply. the weariness and vulnerability captured in those courtroom images portray a growing recognition, that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled, a convicted criminal? no. worse. a loser." it's where we start the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. here with me at the table senior executive editor of bloomberg opinion and msnbc political analyst tim o'brian's here. and lawfare legal fellow and courts correspondent anna bower is here. you were both down at the courthouse today. also joining us msnbc contributor and columnist charlie sykes is back. and former senator and co-host of msnbc's "how to win 2024"

podcast our dear friend claire mccaskill is here. take me inside the day at the courthouse. >> it was very cold waiting in line for a few hours. at least two to get in there. before trump even went in to the courtroom to -- you know, for the first day of opening statements. in the criminal case he was railing against the new york state attorney general tish james as it related to his civil case, which there was a hearing in an adjacent courtroom. you talk about his worst nightmares, not only is he the object of derision, he's in this -- you know, we talked about this last week, but this bonfire of the vanities-esque court set with multiple courtrooms and he's the center of attention in both for things he doesn't want scrutinized, and one is his money and the other it's the truth. >> and the third is his personal life. right? he had pecker bury these things if he wanted them out there, his friend wouldn't have caught and killed them. >> and i think, you know, they ultimately failed to keep it under wraps. and it affects i think his

marriage. it affects his sense of who he is in the world only vis-a-vis the image he wants to create because i think he loves at some level being a macho philanderer. i think he holds on to that, that that shows he's attractive and robust and a winner. but now all of that is being unspooled in the courtroom. it was a pretty -- i think the opening statements were good. i think trump has a very capable legal team with him this time around, which he traditionally hasn't. one, because he usually stiffs his lawyers. and secondly because he's a nightmare client. and some people get into it for the advertising and then they get schooled and they don't want to go near him again. but after that it was very process-oriented. the big show of the day was david pecker taking the stand. but that got truncated and the hearing ended earlier. earlier than i expected it would. but it will pick up again tomorrow, and pecker's testimony's going to be really interesting. >> and the whole idea of who's in charge, court ended earlier than it was supposed to because one of the jurors had a dental

appointment. so it isn't even trump's teeth. it sounds like the judge would accommodate a dental emergency from anyone. but it just shows where the power lies, where all the accommodations and considerations lie. they're with the jury that will decide his fate. >> right. and i think that we saw today just how much effect the jury can have on trump's demeanor and also the attorneys' demeanors as well. trump, i've seen him in multiple jurisdictions where he's charged, he often is scowling, can be, you know, loudly speaking to his attorneys, making kind of grimacing faces. today he still made some of those faces but reeled it in a little bit. he was scolded last week for trying to get up to leave court too early. but today he seemed to be at least in court on his best behavior. and we also seemed to see that todd blanche, who presented the opening statements, seemed to be a little bit more restrained in

the way that i've seen him make arguments before other judges like judge aileen cannon down in florida. and a part of that i think has to do with the jury being there and everyone being on their best behavior and kind of playing to their audience. >> you know, before we -- i want to bring claire and charlie into this, but david pecker walking in the room is a totally different opening witness than michael cohen. i mean, michael cohen -- trump has sought to villainize michael cohen, probably with some success in trumplandia. but david pecker was his guy. what was that moment like? >> well, i was surprised at how at ease pecker was. he was laughing. at points he was almost like giggling out loud. the other reporters in the room and i began laughing when he began laughing. we couldn't be heard. but it had a little bit of theater of the absurd -- >> performative? yeah. >> but you know, again, with trump it's this -- he's like this crypt keeper of the 1980s

and 1990s and all these characters of that era come rolling out. you know, he and pecker launched a magazine together trump style, which was hilarious in and of itself because there's no one i think ever who's been in the public eye who has the worst taste on the planet like donald trump. he has absolutely -- his style is so bad that it's his style. and he and pecker sort of worshiped him in the way that i think people who align around trump in his orbit, they have this unschooled hero worship. and he either burns them or disposes of them. very few last long. and pecker lasted long because he was useful to trump. trump knew how to weaponize, got page 6 and the gossip pages and publications like "national enquirer" to go after his enemies, to feather his own nest and to keep this myth alive that he was the biggest real estate developer in new york and very smart and very attractive. when in fact he's this hot mess

of insecurities who needs the media attention to feel good about himself. >> it's clear the prosecution doesn't plan to make the -- the friendship isn't the crime. it's the illegal covering up, the timing of the covering up with the intent to deceive the voters. it seems like we didn't get much visibility into how the prosecution plans to use pecker as a narrator or a storyteller, but that's all indications suggest that's where they're heading. >> right. and i think that he certainly will be a key witness in terms of proving trump's intent. there has to be an intent to defraud and then he also has to have an intent to conceal or aid another crime. that is what makes this charge a felony. and i think that the prosecution, although there wasn't quite a lot of insight into what exactly the theory will be in terms of the exact theory around that step-up crime. there were a lot of mentions of paccer being from that 2015

meeting at trump tower onward, he's someone who can speak to trump's state of mind, his intent. so i think that that is one reason why he will be a powerful witness. >> and he's a fact witness. >> something everyone said who was down there, for all that we know about this episode and these characters already there was new evidence today, new texts, new e-mails, new information. did you find that? >> i think that there was. and there's been some discussions as well at the end of the day around what exactly will be admissible. there's a lot of discussions around documents that we have not seen, that are not public. and it's to be determined whether or not some of those documents will be admissible. we heard a lot about phone records the prosecution intends to introduce. so i think that we certainly will see new evidence. but the question is there were these questions about whether it would be admissible for hearsay reasons.

that sort of thing is still to be determined. so whether we get to that point and actually see some of that evidence that was discussed today we'll see, but i certainly think that there will be a lot of new things that come out throughout the course of the trial. >> charlie, it's already -- one day and it's already clear why trump has worked so desperately and had a lot of success, as you and i have discussed on multiple success, at avoiding this moment, at avoiding criminal accountability. it's why from the earliest days of his presidency he was obsessed and so insanely triggered by all of the goings-on at doj. he was president of the united states but he was almost acting attorney general of the united states. he was so involved, sought to involve himself in all of the matters of the fbi and the department of justice. just talk about this -- you know, a jury will decide whether he committed a crime beyond any reasonable doubt. but donald trump is now a criminal defendant. >> well, and he's also out of

control. as you've been discussing. in fact, listening to the conversation in the last hour, nicolle, i've actually been having flashbacks to all of these characters including what happened here in my own state of wisconsin during the wisconsin primary where david pecker and the "national enquirer" flooded social media with stories of the alleged affairs of ted cruz, which turned out to just have vanished later. and i'm also having a flashback to october 7th, 2016, just listening to the story. and what i think people need to understand is the context of this, that this is not just hush money to a porn star. on october 7th, 2016 the presidential election was on a knife's edge. and when this story broke, i was texting back and forth with my fellow wisconsinite reince priebus all night. at first i didn't think this was going to make that much of a

difference, but reince priebus who was then chairman of the republican national committee, was in absolute pure panic. in fact, i've written about this. and he texted me, he said charlie, i'm in tears about all of this. we later learn that the chairman of the republican national committee told donald trump that he should drop out. republicans all around the country were thinking do we bail, do we flip the ticket, is it all over? so october 8th, october 9th everything was hanging fire. there was a real chance that donald trump's presidential campaign would end if one more major shoe dropped. so i'm listening to this discussion and thinking what would have happened if one or two more shoes would have dropped? what if we'd learned about stormy daniels? what if we'd learned about karen mcdougal in those days after the "access hollywood" video dropped? and i think it's -- again, we can't possibly know. but it goes to the magnitude of

what happened and why donald trump was so intent on covering this up. paying them off. and also in his mind what a huge secret this was. why he would never want michael cohen to tell anyone what he had done because he knew how close he came to being done if one of those stories had come out at the time. so in retrospect we may think of this as a relatively minor thing, okay, here's donald trump, porn star and pecker and all of this stuff, but -- yes, that is a terrible pun here. >> you just placed porn star and pecker in very close proximity. you made me blush. but keep going. >> we have a president, a porn star, and a guy named pecker who walked into the courtroom. >> we do. >> and this is no longer a joke. this is the world we live in. >> this is who we are. >> but it had tremendous implications for this. and i know that tim remembers this. it's burned into our

consciousness at the time. and i'm hoping that as people watch this they don't get drawn too much into the trivia of, you know, sort of the drama day by day and just remember the magnitude of this cover-up at that moment and what it led to over the last eight years. >> claire, i think -- let me read -- to charlie's point, this is what was said today around 10:40 a.m. alvin bragg's prosecutors read the "access hollywood" transcript for the first time including saying the word -- the p word during their opening statements. todd blanche and donald trump passed notes and whispered while it was happening. they introduced it today for the reasons that charlie's just describing. i was talking about in the last hour, i remember talking to a source who was in the room when trump found out about "access hollywood." and in the room they thought it was over. they thought that pence could maybe take -- i mean that pence would assume the spot at the top

of the ticket. and now we are all numb to the idea that anything could damage trump because we've seen his base's sort of velcro relationship with him. but that wasn't known at the time. and there was a real belief, he had had his -- he'd talked about megyn kelly having blood coming out of her eyes and everywhere, "access hollywood" tape came out after that, he'd been incredibly misogynistic toward hillary clinton in all the debates, and then "access hollywood" tape breaks. the hush money scheme, the crimes happen after that. talk about the timeline as an important -- important enough to mention in opening statements. >> well, i've said many times that if the republican party leaders were unified in their opposition to trump all of this horrible stuff wouldn't have happened. and he was precariously close to that for that period of time in october after this tape came out. so he was scrambling.

and you know what i was thinking, nicolle, today when they read that transcript in the opening statement? i was thinking, it's really interesting that melania's not in the courtroom. >> yes. >> i have tried a lot of criminal cases. i have given a number of opening statements. and if you're giving an opening statement which at its core is saying a man committed fraud by paying off a porn star, his wife sitting there is a powerful, powerful thing. the fact that she's not there -- now, keep in mind what his defense is. his defense is i didn't do it, i didn't have an affair with her, none of this happened. you know, he can't do a reasonable defense, i made mistakes but it's not serious enough for you to, you know, deny me the presidency and put me in prison. he can't do that. he has to be perfect. so if your defense is you didn't do it and your wife is not there, you think she believes him? no. she doesn't believe him. she doesn't believe him for a

hot minute. and that's why she's not there. the only thing she's willing to do is go to a fund-raiser with gay republicans, sending another kind of message, that she wants the republican party to be more open and inclusive than her husband does. so the fact that melania is not in the courtroom is a big deal. now, the prosecutors won't talk about it. but believe me, the jury notices. >> no one's going anywhere. we have so much more on how the trial is reverberating across the 2024 campaign environment. plus, conservative heavyweight liz cheney with a message to the justices on the united states supreme court. act fast. or donald trump might get away with hiding the truth of the january 6th insurrection from the voters. we'll talk about what she is saying to them directly. and later in the broadcast the trump trial contending with the danger of the defendant's own words. prosecutors and team trump are set to tangle over whether the ex-president has already violated the gag order and whether he should pay a price

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we are back on this day of special coverage. tim, anna, charlie, and claire are back. charlie, let me read this to you. this is from the opening statements from the prosecutors. quote, during this trial you'll hear a lot about michael cohen. i suspect the defense will go to great lengths to discredit michael cohen, in part because michael cohen's testimony will be so damning. the evidence will also show what you can credit michael cohen's testimony despite those problems with his credibility. cohen's testimony will be backed

up by other testimony you will hear from witnesses including david pecker and keith davidson as well as an extensive paper trail, and it will all be backed up by donald trump's own words. so one of these things that i feel like we all fell for hook, line and sinker was the idea that because he doesn't e-mail no one can ever prosecute him for anything, nothing will ever stick. well, there's sound of trump on tape talking about paying cash and cohen says no, no, no. if we have that let's pull that up. there are lots of people in the room including donald trump, literally in the room where it all happens. and hope hicks is also scheduled to testify. i think the obsessive focus on michael cohen as a star witness, michael cohen i think has been described to me most recently as the narrator. he's going to tell the story because he walked in both worlds. right? but the documents, the corroborating witnesses, people like pecker and hope hicks who haven't broken with trump will

be the star witnesses. >> yeah. i mean, you can understand why the trump defense would focus on michael cohen. but the fact is as you point out there is so much other evidence. there are so many other witnesses. there's so much other documentary evidence. and the fact is that michael cohen actually went to prison for this. so it is -- he's going to have a story to tell. but look, i don't think there's any secret, any mystery of the fact that if you are donald trump's team, you know, this is the one wedge, this is the one thing that you're going to try to do to create doubt in the mind of at least one juror. just one sidebar, i would hope the prosecutors would get on the phone and tell michael cohen that perhaps he ought to stop tweeting between now and his testimony. but as you say, there's so much else in this. but their strategy is they only need one juror to get a hung jury on all of this, and all they need to do is to plant one

doubt, make people decide that this case does turn on michael cohen and michael cohen can't be believed, and i would say that's got to be a huge -- what, like maybe 90% of their strategy at this particular point. >> and on that, claire mccaskill, maggie haberman of the "new york times" writes this, quote, many in up from's broader orbit are pessimist bick the case ending in a hung jury or mistrial and they see an outright acquittal as virtually impossible. they are bracing for him to be convicted. not because they see the legal grounds but because they think jurors in overwhelmingly democratic manhattan will be against the polarizing ex-president. but the shared sense among many of his advisers is that the process may damage him as much as a guilty verdict. the process, they believe, is its own punishment. let me just play one more piece of sound. this is trump and cohen talking about moving the money to silence the stories. >> i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that

info regarding our friend david. you know, so that -- i'm going to do that right away. i've actually -- >> give it to me. >> i've spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set set the whole thing up with -- >> so what do we got to pay for this? 150? >> yes. and -- >> yes and -- >> no, no, no, no, no. no, no, no. the only person i say no that quickly to in succession are my children. >> it's interesting because the strategy of their defense is really hard because you know what juries have a nose for, they have a nose for the truth? no question michael cohen lied. yeah, he lied. he was lying for trump.

if you work for trump, you lie. it's part of the job description. must be a good liar. if you work for trump. especially as his fixer. that's the case. what cohen has going for him in this trial and that david pecker has going for him in this trial and the reason he's so relaxed on the stand is all they have to do is tell the truth. they don't have to worry about how they're going to be cross-examined. they just have to tell the truth. and juries will smell that. and the corroborating information on phone records and documents, that's the whipped cream and cherry on top. and so it is -- and like i said, the defense lawyers really have a problem because most defense lawyers in this situation would have done their opening statement with really trying to say hey, you know, our client has made some mistakes but he's not a criminal. you know, our client was sloppy

with his business records but he didn't commit a felony. they can't do that. they had to spend their opening statement building up what a great businessman he was. because trump insists on that. he insists on maintaining the lie to such an extent it gets silly. and i will tell you this. maybe there will not be a hung jury. but i do know this. one of the jurors that's on that jury said they got their news from truth social. so that opening statement had to be a shocker to them too. as hard as it was for trump to listen to, it probably shocked them if that's where they get their news. >> and this presentation of the most -- to your point, the most sordid details of trump's life viewed as sordid by trump, which is why this tightwad spends all his own money to keep it secret, so i'm not judging whether or not sex with a porn star and a playmate is sordid. he did when he decided to pay money to cover them up. we are so far away from this i'm reluctant to bring it up, but it just goes to what's driving trump.

polling over the last several months shows that it really does matter to voters if trump is convicted of a crime. most americans say the charges are serious, somewhat or very serious. 64% of all americans. not very or not at all serious, 34% of all americans. this is before witnesses like david pecker, who've never broken with trump or hope hicks, who's never broken with trump, took the stand. >> and the voters that it matters to is going to come down to this little slice of moderate and independent voters in swing states who i think do believe in the rule of law and they do believe in civic virtues and the proper comportment that presidents and other leaders should engage with when they're running the country. and i think that's a thing to bear in mind about this court case as a whole, is trump doesn't need to go to jail actually to pay a political price. he doesn't need to be found guilty to pay a political price because on an evidentiary basis everything that's in the public purview right now is

overwhelmingly damning. >> and different from the mueller case where barr was able to come out and say exonerated, there's nothing here, and you had to read volumes 1 and 2. this will all play out day after day after day in a manhattan courthouse with the world's press outside. >> around issues average voters can latch on to more readily than a russian conspiracy, which is that four months after you have a child with your wife melania you're engaging allegedly in an affair with a porn star. you know, what the defense laid out today, they sort of had two prongs in their opening statement. the first one was the evidence you're about to see you can't trust it because michael cohen is a sleaze-bag. and the prosecutors will put other fact witnesses like david pecker or tape recordings up to say other people said the same thing. and then they went the extra mile and said -- and it's what trump's been saying. these are just legal expenses.

and i don't think anyone's going to believe they were just legal expenses. >> no one pays their lawyers off the books. >> and in a multiple of the amount of money they need? you know, it's a cover-up. but the second prong of their defense was did that amount amount to election interference. and i think the prosecution's going to have a hard time possibly convincing a jury that this did amount to election interference. that's the weak leg of this. so i don't think the evidentiary trail is where the weak spots are for the prosecution. but at the end of the day the story is going to be i think politically damaging to him regardless. >> well, and on the election interference piece i think the prosecution dealt with that today by saying that it doesn't matter if -- they said, quote, we'll never know and it doesn't matter if the conspiracy was a difference maker in the election, but you'll see from this campaign post and the speeches at rallies that he was concerned that this would hurt his standing with female voters. you'll also see on election night blah, blah, blah, that keith david sorn texted dylan howard of the "national enquirer" and said what have we

done. if you have to prove that trump was in a tailspin that is so abundantly available in the public record. >> right. i think that that's right. but i also think that this argument about election interference just really matters in terms of what you just discussed in terms of how this trial is going to affect the election. i think that although trump might see the sordid details that come out and the fact that he was, you know, in a tailspin around all this as -- i think there are still people who think a porn star payoff scheme itself is something that's very trumpian, they're just very used to it at this point, after the "access hollywood" tape, after everything that we've seen over the past several years, people are just kind of numb to any kind of trump scandal. and so what we saw today with this election interference argument is really trying to hammer home why this is serious and why this conduct is serious.

so it continues to be something that thematically if not as an evidentiary matter is very important as this trial goes on, that the prosecution continues to have this theme of election interference because it brings a type of gravity to the case that i think some jurors or the american public might not otherwise really see in these facts. >> and we should all spend till the end of time trying to figure out why a wannabe president and a porn star and a guy named pecker doesn't matter to fib, has more to do with us than them. thank you for being here and starting us off. tim, charlie, and claire stick around. after the break a warning, a dire, direct and blunt warning from liz cheney. time is ticking. if we want to hold trump accountable for the deadly insurrection. that's next. at's next. lling bugs the worry-free way. not the other way. zevo traps use light to attract and trap flying insects

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i think it's very important that the supreme court recognize that what he's doing is a delaying tactic and that the american people -- it cannot be the case that a president of the united states can attempt to overturn an election and seize power and that our justice system is incapable of holding a trial, of holding him to account before the next election.

>> former congresswoman liz cheney last month sounding the alarm of the danger of the supreme court's delay in donald trump's election interference january 6th case. today in an op-ed in the "new york times" ahead of thursday's supreme court oral arguments over trump's claims of absolute presidential immunity liz cheney went even further, cautioning that a delay by the nation's highest court may mean that voters go to the ballot box with trump once again on the ballot without ever hearing the significant evidence of his efforts to steal the 2020 election. she writes, "the indictment and public reporting suggests that the special counsel was able to obtain key evidence our committee did not have. it appears that the grand jury received evidence from witnesses such as mark meadows, the former trump chief of staff, and dan scavino, a former trump aide. both of them refused to testify in our investigation. public reporting also suggests

that members of trump's office of white house counsel and other white house aides testified in full, without any limitations based on executive privilege, as did vice president mike pence and his counsel." liz cheney warning that if voters do not hear this evidence before november they may never hear it at all. she goes on to say this, quote, trump knows what all of these witnesses have said under oath and trump understands the risks he faces at trial. that is why he is doing everything possible to try to delay his january 6th federal criminal trial until after the november election. if the trial is delayed past this fall and trump wins re-election, he will surely fire the special counsel, order his justice department to drop all january 6th cases, and try to prevent key grand jury testimony from ever seeing the light of day. we're back with charlie and claire. i like that now liz is saying the quiet part out loud. but charlie, that is the plan.

>> yeah, that is the plan. look, i think it is unconscionable that the supreme court has allowed these dilatory tactics to go on for so long. they could have ruled on this months and months ago. in a rational reasonable world the court will rule 9-0 very, very quickly, that of course the president of the united states is not -- does not have absolute immunity, is not immune from prosecution. but the whole point here is -- and liz cheney just lays it out so clearly. this is all about delay. this is all about making sure the voters do not have a chance to have this evidence aired in a court of law. and i really appreciate the clarity of her message and the fact that she is continuing to press this and put pressure on the court to the extent that anybody can put pressure on the court to say we understand what the game is. it's not just whether or not how you rule on immunity, it's how quickly you rule on immunity. >> claire, the supreme court

is -- it's a lot of things. immune to press coverage isn't one of them. in just about every public appearance he has justice alito trashes the media for covering the supreme court, like how dare you cover us, there are only nine of us, we're here till we die, how dare you cover us. others have said things that make abundantly clear they're not just loosely aware of the coverage, they consume all of it. what do you think the impact of cheney's op-ed will be? >> well, i think to a person they're probably very thin-skinned. these are people that -- and frankly offended that anyone would call into question their conduct. some of them came to the bench with a big chip on their shoulder because of things that occurred at their confirmation hearings. i think you can put both kavanaugh and clarence thomas in that category. so this -- will they be influenced by this?

i don't know. i think john roberts might. and it's really his responsibility. he's the chief justice. and keep in mind jack smith went to the supreme court months ago and said take this up now, don't wait for the appellate court. it's coming to you anyway. take it up now. and they go no, no, no, no, go along there and take it to the appellate court first and then it will come to us in due time. so she's absolutely right. and it will be another scandal for the supreme court. and frankly chief justice roberts needs to look in the mirror and decide does he really want to be the chief justice that's remembered for the complete disintegration of anybody's faith in the united states supreme court in this country? because it's already hanging on by a thread after all of the ethics scandals. and now if they give trump this out i think it will go even further, the public's opinion of them. >> the supreme court has an historic low approval rating in the eyes of the american people. i think it just plunged farther faster than any institution in

civic life other than congress, which is kind of amazing. farther than the media writ large. and no one has said the word ginni thomas. but ginni thomas went into the january 6th select committee where liz cheney was the vice chair and said basically damn right i believe in the lies that fueled the deadly insurrection. should clarence thomas even be considering these cases? >> no, he should be -- he should have been recused from every motion and every moment that's passed through the supreme court involving anything touching january 6th. ginni thomas not only said she supported enthusiastically, she was texting with mark meadows -- >> was e-mailing state legislators -- >> e-mailing legislators, fake electors. it is just a raw conflict of interest. and i think like all the institutions that donald trump has touched and corrupted in the public mind the supreme court is not immune from that. and i think roberts has been --

you know, they've had the financial conflict of interests issues apart from donald trump that have already hounded this court and clarence thomas in particular. they've had the sort of intellectual and academic conflict of interests that have haunted people like alito. and i think john roberts has hoped in the same way robert mueller hoped that you could stay above this deep trench warfare that's infecting the public dialogue and faith in institutions by taking the high road. and trump takes people like that to the cleaners. he took mueller to the cleaners. and i think john roberts has already said in the tax rulings in trump's cases no president is above the law. that is a bedrock of our legal system. and if that's the case then this immunity ruling should be a layup. they don't need months to do it. they should rush to get it done. you know, i think the other thing about liz cheney, because i think she has been the clearest beacon of morality and

civic virtues in the republican party, in the trump era, is there's one more thing she needs to do besides writing op edds. is she needs to campaign for joe biden. along with mitt romney and -- >> cheney created the permission structure for republicans to say after 2024 we will go back to debating taxes but in 2024 if you want to remain a democracy -- >> save the country. >> vote for joe biden. i agree with you. claire mccaskill, thank you my friend for spending time with us. tim and charlie stick around a little bit longer. coming up next for us, the manhattan d.a. says donald trump has violated his gag order at least seven times since last monday. and that does not even include his attacks on michael cohen today. we'll bring you that story next.

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you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job description. visit indeed.com/hire today was the first day of the actual trial. -- the first order of business and the people of the state of new york versus donald trump will not be a condition of david testimony. instead they will have this hearing scheduled last week on whether trump will pay a price for violating his gag order and the things he has been saying and tweeting prosecutors have requested to hold the ex- president and contempt for his social media posts but they arguably violate the terms of the gag order manhattan district attorney alvin bragg's office asked judge merchan to

hold him in contempt of three violations of the gag order. by thursday they argued the ex- president had violated it seven more times , those are the ones you see on the screen now. we will not read them but they smear witnesses in the trial. they repeat a baseless fox news conspiracy theory about a potential juror, i think at least one of them, is no longer on the jury. he might have violated his gag order today when he spoke at the courthouse and attack the credibility of key witness, michael cohen, again. during our conversation msnbc legal analyst barbara mclagan rated tim and charlie are still with us. trump is not going to change, ever, full stop. what does everyone else do? >> reporter: i have been hearing from a lot of friends who are judges and former judges about how to handle a defendant like donald trump. his m.o. is chaos do everything you can to shake things up.

and their people to hold him accountable. what i am hearing from people is they have to take a strong stand to let them know you cannot mess around. this is a trial, a criminal case and we will hold you accountable. alvin bragg is asking for $3000 in fines for that is not a parking ticket for donald trump first and foremost, there has to be a finding that he did, indeed, violate the gag order. it seems apparent to me based on the text of things you just showed print the question is, what do you do about it? for the first time, i imagine, there will be a financial sanction and a warning of jail with up to 30 days is a possibility under the new york statute >> i am staring at all of the violations of the gag order but trump has made and wrestling with the platform. i guess the point, charlie, is that once again the facts are in dispute.

an increasingly with donald trump, the facts are not in dispute. what is evidenced is the progress he has made in delegitimizing and orienting the sensibilities. i would argue that even eight years ago violating a gag order would've had a political price to pay. we were a little more respectful even on the right of the rule of law if anything, it is another piece of evidence of how far down the road he has gone towards delegitimizing these institutions that he constantly puts his nose up at. >> reporter: that is an excellent point. this plays out on two levels but number one is the flagrant violation of the judge's gag order. again $3000 fine is just pocket change for him. this is also part of the larger campaign that donald trump is delegitimizing the course and the entire justice system. which will have tremendous

impact. not just on his -- he is thinking in terms of his own political career. if you undermined faith in the rule of law. if tens of millions of people do not believe it anymore, this is a low to our constitutional order. the question that i have and i would defer to tim on all of this be. i do not know donald trump psychology. he is clearly bating the judge. he is behaving in a way that no other criminal defendant would do without having severe sanction. he is clearly skating on all of that. there is part of me that thinks he almost wants to be a martyr. he wants to bait the judge into putting him in jail. it creates this dilemma for the judge. if it was any other criminal defendant, he might lock him up . by locking up donald trump he gives him exactly what he wants.

what is the psychology here? if there is a psychology or if it donald trump just venting because he is donald trump and can't help? >> the virtue of having rules and laws is you should not have to think about the psychology and then rules and laws are only as valuable as they can be if you enforce them. and you encourage people to obey them no matter what. this is what will be on juan merchan tomorrow morning. >> let me give you the last word on this, barbara . what do you understand about judge merchan with the sandoval and the evidence? he seems to reach for something reasonable that neither side can claim a full victory on. is there a guide at this point? what is your instinct about how he will approach this tomorrow. >> reporter: he seems like he is a pragmatic judge and a no- nonsense judge. i think he will enforce the gag orders.

i think he is going to impose some modest sanctions with a message that if they continue, both sanctions will escalate up to and including jail. or even up to 30 days. holding that lever over trump's head is a valuable lever. even if this is something that donald trump wants, then maybe he will get it. >> all i can think about is tim and charlie with donald trump talking about the threat account -- threadcount in scotland but you can almost hear in the reviews but the sheets were nice and the bed -- you can see it now. barbara mcquade, thank you for spending time with her husband tim o'brien and charlie sykes thank you for spending the hour with us pretty coming up, our coverage of the trump trial continues. i will be back in place filling in for my friend after a quick break. stay with us.

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circle hi, there, everyone. it is 6:00 in new york. we continue our special breaking news coverage of the first criminal trial of ex- president of these united states, donald trump would trump is back in new york for opening statements in his election interference criminal trial the day moves swiftly and dramatically. prosecutors laid out the details of the alleged crimes -- crime saying this is about criminal conspiracy. a detailed donald trump's relationship with his x fixer, michael cohen and their alleged conspiracy, with the prosecutors say they pulled off at the help of the national enquirer. to purchase stories about donald trump leading up to the 2016 election. it is a practice known as catching kill. prosecutors alleging they quote like agree to cook the books to repay michael cohen for the payouts but they called it all, quote, an illegal conspiracy to

undermine the integrity of a presidential election donald trump's defense emphasized his innocence in the opening statements baker with this, quote, president trump did not commit any crimes. you will find that he is not guilty. the prosecution then call its first witness, david ceo of the national enquirer publisher, american media inc. and a longtime trump ally. the prosecution called a co- conspirator in the hush money plots. david in his brief testimony today admitted that the national enquirer use what he called checkbook journalism. often paid for their skus. testimony will resume tomorrow morning regarding our coverage, katie fang. she was in the courtroom all day. we have former u.s. acting solicitor general and msnbc legal analyst britta katie, i

start with you. we have talked about the national enquirer. we have talked about the context of when the stories were caught and killed and the aftermath of access hollywood. we cannot get over the fact the first thing the jury heard today was a transcript, not the tape of the access hollywood. i will tell you sitting there that you would think that the most powerful way to convey that language would have been hearing donald trump's own voice saying those words. yet, it was still startling as you are sitting in this but still official courtroom, to have the prosecutor get up and say those words. to use that language. >> they were edited the way we do them for tv? >> reporter: not edited. in full -- i was going to sample something else but not allowed to predict the impact

was exactly as it was intended. we do not speak, we don't do that, it is just jim talk kind of stuff. two, to have it be done in the context of the bigger picture of the story that was being told by the prosecution made sense. it was another example of how donald trump in his massage any and grossness, he was so desperate to hide that and try to do damage control that he would pay to make sure that people did not talk. >> it seems like a lot of the analysis is around jury selection and around these hearings. it seems like this is consequential, having this cemented in the transcript. >> reporter: it is the motive evidence. this is necessary to prove up what the scheme was. i think we will hear that inside the campaign just how this was a frenzy.

they needed to do something to prevent more damaging information from coming out. clear mode of evidence. i agree with katie. in a courtroom, no matter how or where it is, there is a solemnity to it. these jurors having just gone through the process, have taken an oath. that hearing, but coarseness, to me one of the things i took away was i was very curious of out how they would open. one of the things he said about michael cohen, which is in contrast to that tape, the transcript, i am going to ask how trump's lawyer turned out to be a criminal. is there anyone -- i know the three of us don't. he said he wants to bring in paul back on the campaign, a convicted criminal. he has roger stone, steve

bannon. the litany of people and the idea he will betray himself as some upstanding guy. unbeknownst to him, michael cohen was doing this behind his back. i think they call that an interesting choice. i want to make sure that there is something hot, with honey and lemon in your cup. i hope you feel better but we need you. you cannot go down on us. tell me what you make of david as a first witness. >> reporter: i think it made sense to start with him because he was describing what he called the checkpoint journalism model. i don't think that will be the most concerning think we will hear from in the following days. i suspect the national enquirer is not exactly a speaking of journalistic behavior. what was described already with the first part of the trial, was that, you know, basically a catching kill scheme.

everyone if you are running for office are prominent person, we would love to have a catching kill scheme. biting can do it and kill stories about his son, clinton could do it for wolinsky and the like what i found was a real relationship between the hush money part of the case and the motive and what was doing out of it. the other, just to return to andrew's point about the opening statements, i was shocked by blanche's argument, trump's lawyer argument , on the law but he said i have a spoiler alert there is nothing wrong with trying to influence an election, it is called democracy. that is just thoroughly bizarre. the question was how to influence an election. if i bright people $1 million to vote for me it is influencing an election but it is obviously illegal. the question is how it is done

by doing it with these kind of payments through his lawyer that are mischaracterized but i think trump's lawyers have their work cut out for them. >> i thought it was an interesting choice. i am not a lawyer but when i thought that rudy giuliani describe the funneling. funneling is never associated with a legal financial scheme, typically. at least in the movies. when rudy giuliani describes the funneling of funds from donald trump through michael cohen for cubbies expenses, he told half the story. i thought blanche made clear that this is not terrain he can avoid. it felt like a political argument. we are going to debate with the definition of a crime, we will not defend on the facts. does that suggest there is weakness on the facts aside for them? >> reporter: yeah. i think i will quote from the great katie phang on this. we all know hundreds and thousands of lawyers, no lawyer

takes out home equity loan to go and pay for a client's payments to some person. that literally never happens. it is so suspicious. the claim that trump's lawyer is trying to make is that did it on his own. call me silly, but that is not all plausible. i think they have the spaghetti strategy going of just anything, a bogus claim about the law, a bogus claim about the facts that works on tv did -- does not work in a regular court of law with the solemn procedures and a panel jury that just wants to listen to evidence. >> rachel is not here but i will say this thing that she said. a jury will not have a legal sophistication that the three of you have they will have the common sense that we all have. he sort of seemed this with

stormy daniels well. if you are trump's lawyer and you aren't impugning michael cohen. he did not have the -- with -- michael cohen also spent his money and went to jail because of its. there is a common sense gut check that seems to have caught up with the story that they were trying to tell them your opening statement. >> reporter: but prosecution was clear and clean. it was three specific catch and kill schemes that trump was involved in that benefited him for purposes of influence in the outcome of the 2016 election. there is no one off. trump did not accidentally have sex with stormy daniels and actually pay her off and actually have these things happen. you see that dino the doorman got paid off. karen mcdougal got paid off but the cast of characters never changes. the common denominator is michael cohen as the picture with david fixing the public face and donald trump paying

it off. what was important is that there is some of us that are jaded having gone through this for years. going on this wild ride that is the donald trump experience. we are all in this courtroom and listening to all of this and we are still stunned when we hear todd blanche get up. by the way, the spaghetti theory, we have heard this as trial lawyers. you throw anything on the wall and hope something sticks. you just want to create reasonable doubt. if you created somehow, who cares how it happened. blanche is meandering. we will talk about this now but we will talk about this. it did not seem like there was any type of organized flow and he only used 35 minutes when he could have used more. i think he got to the point where he ran out of steam. and we would just sit down. >> reporter: one of the things in the opening is it is really important for both sides not to overpromise.

you are predicting, if it is done right, you are predicting what the proof will be. if you overpromise and say something that turns out to be incorrect, the other side pounces. i was struck that there is a defense opening that is anodyne. reasonable doubt, reasonable doubt, michael cohen has done bad things. it is not really a theory. anyone smart, where is the through line it is not back, it is stay tuned. let us see what they can proof. one of the things he said that i was struck by, that the hundred $20,000 -- $420,000 was not repayment. he went right there and said that. it would be fascinating to see whether he has to equal on that. >> reporter: he did the lawyer things and he got paid the 424. >> what does it suggest that they will deny -- >> reporter: they will have to

save the $420,000 is for a legitimate purpose. >> the prosecution made clear was a salary to an employee. >> reporter: it is going to be really hard to see. i was surprised that he went that far and said that. that could really come back and hurt the defense. the prosecution will say, are you kidding? the second thing he did that made no sense was saying, you heard that donald trump is cheap. if he is cheap why will he pay for $420,000 and not is $130,000 to mark it also like gobs and gobs of money. i hear what you are saying that it was all over the place. i thought there was a contradiction in saying he was frugal and the $420,000 did not include the hush money. we have not denied yet. it seems so nonlinear. >> reporter: that is exactly the right term. it is in a transcript.

i am telling you now, both sides look really carefully at how people open in closing, both sides, if there is any misstep, they pounce on it. >> reporter: but jurors had notes too. they asked for notes and notepads. as andrew knows, they are given to the jurors tomorrow. this becomes my notepad it. they were taking notes and andrea is right. the lawyers will get the transcripts and be prepared for closing and point out everything that is not right but the jurors will will say, wait, you told me this would happen. >> reporter: usually people do not want lawyers on a jury. to your point that neil underscored that this is just not how lawyers operate. >> reporter: these are civil lawyers. these are lawyers -- if you have an ongoing client like this, you would say, you are caring a balance but you have ar and account receivable. can you pay up ? i'm not going

to take out a home equity line of credit to pay the fees that you owe me. while you are at it make it look like i did work for you. it is absurd if i build this accounting, they would never let me take out a home equity for you. >> the other thing is the common sense would suggest, they will know that michael cohen went to jail. donald trump has smeared him, and they will know he is in jail. they made clear they went to jail and he will get to say why he went to jail because of donald trump. and donald trump did not go to jail. maybe it is a fools errand to understand what the trump team is doing. what story are they trying to tell? it seems they are trying to have it four different ways? >> reporter: heaven knows. it is impossible to untangle what the story is. i think you are absolutely right to say, common sense is what will prevail.

that is why the founders insisted on the right to a jury trial. to have people who are not clouded by legal technicalities or this or that. ordinary people are doing that. you may have a lawyer or two on but in the jury room is going to be common sense that will control. it is possible and this is, i do think, my best attempt to answer the question. what trump's lawyer is trying to do is to get one juror. in our system of justice, if all 12 do not vote to convict you have a hung jury. in this trial, you have to do it all again. i suspect that is what trump is going for. i do think andrew is right to seize on this overpromise point. a point that harry litman made on twitter, whatever it is called now. he said, what witness is going to testify to the idea that these payments will legitimately go into expensive. it seems hard to find someone who will say that, if they do

find someone that person will be torn to shreds on the stand >> the person that received them will say something totally different. still to come, we will dig deeper. transcripts are just coming in of opening statements from both sides. as we begin to see how his strategy of attacking witnesses and trying to minimize laundering may play out in a courtroom. we will get into the tabloid roots of the trial and the former publisher of the national enquirer called today as the first witness. we will tell you all about with a very short break. 90 seconds and we will all be back. do not go anywhere. flonase all good. also, try our allergy headache and nighttime pills. ♪(voya)♪ there are some things that work better together. like your workplace benefits and retirement savings. voya provides tools that help you make the right investment and benefit choices. so you can reach today's financial goals

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delivered in packs portioned for your dog. it's amazing what real food can do. we are back. katie, i had a chance to talk to cartwright seven hours ago but i think it was two about -- the parts of the story that everyone knows, are michael cohen and stormy daniels but the person no one has heard from is david this is from mr. michelangelo. as the agreed to the trump tower meeting, trump is there. contacted michael cole at the information. told donald trump, who told merchan take care of it . directed howard, his editor in chief to negotiate an agreement to pay $30,000 to the doorman.

to buy the exclusive rights of that story. the evidence will show but was not acting as a publisher. he was acting as a co- conspirator. what is the significance of having a co-conspirator? >> reporter: it is called privacy recency. if you start strong, you will end strong. sometimes it can just be, this is the guy who actually got immunity to talk to the feds. that is the reason why. >> reporter: will the jury know that? >> reporter: they will hear that because trump will not let that go by that the guy got immunity for being a co- conspirator. everyone has dirty hands and desperate let us be clear. i'm not trying to guilt any lilies. cohen has dirty hands. has dirty hands. trump has the dirtiest hands of all. it just goes to show that you cannot live in glass houses.

and people like david i said a few hours ago, trump was slumped in his chair during instructions to the jury. the jury is sitting there with his eyes closed. sometimes looking up, whatever. when took the stand , he was staring. i don't know if he was staring him down or attentive. he actually was paying attention. it is because he can say, i was there. i participated. i am a co-conspirator i'm going to own it. maybe i got immunity but i will on my role. how much more powerful that can be we have a jury of 12 that are trying to figure out, what this conspiracy was all about, the main players are and then to enter's point, the prosecution told me at the beginning, this case is about a criminal conspiracy. if you are a jerk and you hurt her up a course of the trial,

evidence that supports what the prosecution told that in the opening, you are buying it. >> if you hear from trump's friends, david is not just a friend. he is being described as a co- conspirator. in the words of his own former workforce, they did this extraordinary thing with the first time in the national enquirer history, endorse a presidential candidate, donald trump. >> reporter: i am worried that we are so enamored to the store we are being told because we look at fox news. and the idea that a major network is in cahoots and doing something with a major candidate is something that, you know, with the dominion suit, especially the details but we were all like, this is unbelievable. that is this case. just to be clear, that is this case. but even the gag order, we will

hear the hearing on that. it is the same thing. that is fox news targeting a juror. donald trump repeats that. all of that collusive behavior, to use a loaded term, is really at the heart of this. in terms of the idea that todd blanche will be like, president trump earned the moniker president. he is a good guy. he was shocked that michael cohen is engaged in criminality. the one thing that will be clear to this jury is that this was an effort with a media outlet to create a false picture of him and a false picture of his adversaries. david unrelated to michael cohen will give that testimony. >> there is a hearing before david goes back on the stamford the attacks on michael cohen has been ceaseless. i wonder if those too could backfire. do we have the tape from the

last hour of michael cohen and donald trump figure out how to pay david? they were friends until they weren't and intelthree goes to jail. how do you track with a jury a rupture in a relationship in a way that keeps the facts front and center? will that be one of the prosecution's missions tumor >> reporter: when you put a cooperator on, one of the key things you say at closing, you will hear best. you do not like michael cohen. you have to like him. he is not ours. he is that man's. they will point and say, we did not choose him. he chose hampered the reason he is on the stand is because he chose them to do this dirty work the reason david is here is because he chose hampered you will hear back. this is an insider. you know what, you cannot do crimes. you cannot do crimes with criminals and then turn around and say, you cannot believe them because i committed crimes

of a criminal. >> let me play the sound of michael cohen and donald trump. >> i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, david, you know, so that -- i'm going to do that right away. she come up with and i've spoken to alan about how to set the whole thing up. with funding -- yes. it is all the stuff. you don't know what that company. correct. i am all over that. i spoke to alan about it. when it comes back to financing -- >> what financing? >> no, no, no. i could make that my ringer, i would. the fact that it is the doorman

first and then that formalizes the relationship, basically cohen as trump and the women being silenced. it felt like an important factor for the prosecution to put into the record. i am pouring through the defense 's opener but they don't speak to that. they don't speak to the relationship with david. what will they say can >> i want to highlight two things about what was just played. after listening to a, i don't know how in the world trump's lawyer will say trump did not know what was going on. that is him, right there at the scene of the whole thing. the second thing, it was not just as andrew said a moment ago, i am a criminal and i hear another criminal, michael cohen. here is a third criminal on this tape as well, allen. you have a whole bunch of these folks. that is why i think the prosecutors today called it not

just a conspiracy but a cover- up. the conspiracy is important for the reasons that katie said. for the reason you get up with this doorman. that is showing a pattern of behavior where others are in on it and the law has always treated group crimes and conspiracies differently going all the way back 800 years in england and it allows broader use of evidence and it allows for the prosecutors to tell a complete story of who did what and when. the cover-up piece is important as well because, opposite, that shows a feeling of guilt on their part. they were doing something nefarious. trump is going to say what i was doing, if it were nefarious, which is trying to conceal these payments from my wife. i was not trying to influence an election or so on. that is where i think we will see factual development in the days to come and not something we got into into the short opening statements today.

>> pay with cash. everyone pays their lawyers for legitimate business expenses with cash right now. >> $130,000 in cash. >> let me read you a bit more from the opening statements today. this is the prosecutor going through the catch and kill statements. importantly, tomorrow, david will be on the stand. he will be available for cross- examination as well. i would assume if any of these are in dispute, they will ask. five months before the presidential election in june of 2016, dylan howard of the national enquirer heard from one of his frequent sources, a lawyer named keith davidson. davidson was representing ms. mcdougall and she was shopping around her account with donald trump and davidson told howard that he had, quote, a blockbuster from story. karen mcdougal said she had a romantic and sexual relationship with the defendant while he was married. it lasted nearly a year.

david had tested him at the meeting and howard got in touch with michael cohen, the trump organization told him that what he had learned and told and the defendant that he did not want this information about karen mcdougal to become public because he was concerned about his effect on the election. i understand that you say one time that it was not about the election but what they laid out was three stories that were caught and killed ahead of the election. how on earth do you even suggest? what do you do? how do you defend against these facts? >> reporter: listening to that, nicole, i guess the national enquirer only does the news that is fit to purchase. i cannot begin to understand how this is a journalistic in denver. -- endeavor. the prosecution is showing the priest separate things but you

have the doorman. you have karen mcdougal and then you have stormy daniels. it is a repeated pattern of behavior. maybe defense can poke holes at one of these or two of these. to do it at all three and claim trump is out of the loop each time just really is going to -- i do not see a viable real strategy just as in the stolen document gates at mar-a-lago, i don't see a legal or factual stance. i just see a bunch of spaghetti that is thrown out. if they can get the one juror to hold out and donald trump will be convicted this time around. >> thank you very much for starting us up this hour. katie and andrew please stay with me. coming up, we dial deeper into the tabloid scandal at the heart of this criminal trial. stay with us.

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>> reporter: now. >> they did not want to hurt him. >> reporter: you think it is because of a personal relationship with the guy who runs ami and is friends with donald trump? >> correct. >> that was former playboy model karen mcdougal talking about how the hush money payment she received from ami, the national enquirer parent company, how that worked. today prosecutors referred to the payments as well as money paid to stormy daniels. arguing that donald trump and his allies were trying to bury stories about his extramarital affairs in a plot to protect trump's campaigns viability. prosecutors say david the former publisher of ami hatched the catch and kill scheme with donald trump and michael: early tuesday i spoke with abortion national choir editor lockwood cartwright about how works. >> reporter: week after week we are running the hit pieces

about trump's rivals they are basically propaganda in favor of trump the candidate was up in the polls. we were running a hit piece about them. some of these pieces would come from the land of info wars as i would walk by dylan howard's office and see him watching howard jones. >> jeremy, andrew invoked the dominion lawsuit as a way that we all learned a lot. you probably know more than we do. we all learned a lot more about fox's relationship and entered described it as collusive, which i liked, with donald trump. the degree to which it cost them half $1 billion was because they knowingly broadcast and publish lies. in this case, it is such a different, it is different and

it is the same. this is a plot hatched in office in a meeting with three people. one of them is donald trump. >> reporter: one of the things that people underappreciated about his political rise was his relationship with very selective media outlets. most people focus on fox news. fox news was not the end all be all. it was alex jones and info wars but it was the national enquirer. as much as we would like to write off the national enquirer, it is just some silly tabloid thing. it was actually very impactful. going back to the 2008 campaign when it changed the course of the democratic primary when john edwards' affair was exposed because the national enquirer paid -- they paid money to expose the woman he was having an affair with. breitbart is also an interesting case.

they actually did what the republicans accused as an immediate was doing which is colluding and putting our thumb on the scale. the new york times does not do that as much as the conspiracy theories we would like to paint us to be, hand in hand with the biting campaign. the breitbart, steve bannon, donald trump nexus was real. they planned campaign events together including trump's visit to the border when he had just announced his run for the presidency. it was real and impacted the race. >> reminded us what david has to say. everyone reminded me he had limited immunity in the federal investigation into the facts. >> reporter: david we will see his testimony continue but there is a reason they call him

first. he has the goods and he has this kind of long-standing relationship with the former president that, you know, you kind of forget was -- if you are living in new york in the '90s, trump had this relation with the new york post, the national enquirer, fox news, all of these media outlets. nbc too. the apprentice. he was very connected. that really helped elevate his persona. david testimony, it is by far evidence of the most corrupt dealings that trump had with the media. of course, there was a financial transaction. i expect this to be very explosive. >> trump seems to be concerned about it as well. >> reporter: there is legalities and the image. i don't think that, he has

fought this because he knows the risk to him of facts coming out. he likes to just have spin. he does not want to have a courtroom where, as judges say, facts and law still matter. by all accounts, whatever happens in the trial at the end, there will be so many witnesses putting donald trump at ground zero of fake news. he likes to use that moniker but that is what he was doing both in terms of rosie eating up himself. one tidbit according to the is michael going paying $50,000 so it will come out favorably to donald trump as a successful businessman. that is putting lipstick on a pig plus stuff. but then there is denigrating his adversaries. this is very much like the precursor to fox news. just a final point, when i was

in the molar investigation, paul and sean texting all of the time about strategy and about what sean hannity should say up and what paul manafort should be doing. >> influencing the jury? >> definitely influencing how he is seen so that it would attack us and the courts are unfair, it is a witch hunt. what did not help was when paul manafort went ahead and coached two witnesses to lie and he got thrown in jail. before then, this was the whole planet. it was complicit with a reporter. that is something -- i revere reporters and the idea that you would say to me, i need to tell you something. this is what i am doing with one political candidate, it is

so anathema to democracy. that is what happens in russia. >> i do want to ask you the political question. these are not facts that trump is running on. he is running on the facts of mar-a-lago. he is running on the insurrection. he pays tribute to the insurrection is at all of his rallies. this is different for him, politically. i want to ask you if that extends. we need to speak in a quick break. we will all be right back. thanks brandon. with usps ground advantage®. ♪♪ they need their lawn back fast and you need scotts turf builder rapid grass. it grows grass 2 times faster than just seed alone. giving you a stronger lawn. smell that freedom, eh? get scotts turf builder rapid grass today, it's guaranteed. feed your lawn. feed it. after advil: let's dive in! but...what about your back? it's fineeeeeeee!

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jeremy peters, andrew weissmann, katie phang are still with me. i want to read -- the transcripts just came in, hopped up the press. i want to put politics back in mess. you can help it has been you hear testimony that the republican national committee even considered after access hollywood came out but it was too late to replace their own nominee and find another candidate for the election a month before election day. the defendant and his staff are deeply concerned that the tape would irreparably damage his viability as a candidate and reduces standing with female voters in particular. they knew it was damaging not only because trump bragged about sexual assault that they knew it was damaging not only because the language was crude and vulgar that the campaign was also worried about the damage the tape would cause precisely because it was on video. seeing and hearing a candidate in his own words and in his own

voice and body language. his own gestures has a much greater impact on voters than words on paper but the campaign went into damage control to blunt the impact of the tape. that, on the timeline is when stormy daniels happens. take us back in time, politically. >> reporter: what trump said as soon as axis hall would take him out. about mike pence's wife. mother will not like this. as crass and prudent as that joke was, it indicated the fear that the campaign had. oh, boy. this is not going to be good back in that moment in time, it is easy to forget just how quickly the right ring -- white wing coalesced around him but they saw how bad it was and many of the women who would end up running the antiabortion movement, the susan b anthony list, the tea party patriots, those women who are always

favorable to trump, they coalesced around him in that moment and they made a decision saying, we will forget about how awful this is. he has got to win. we hate hillary more. that is basically what that election came down to. >> trump knew, maybe precisely because those women rallied around him but stormy daniels would end it. that is when the scheme he is not on trial goes into action. >> reporter: even though sometimes he like to sit there and say it is armenta -- carmen delights as this is politics but this is not about law living in a separate lane than politics. this is a bout falsifying business records to influence the outcome of an election. if you look at the trump access hollywood tape in a vacuum, maybe it is just locker room talk. if you knew as a voter that he silenced dino the doorman. and he may have a love child out of wedlock and you knew he

silenced karen mcdougal after a year plus while montagna is pregnant. maybe, maybe that would have moved. maybe the antiabortion crusade would not have been worth it. maybe hypocrisy would have stopped you dead in your tracks when you went to vote for the president of the united states. we never would know. it was brought up by the prosecution. >> they said. they tell the jury exactly what katie is saying. we do not need to know the answer because we will never know the answer. >> reporter: this reminds me of the debate in a different context. when james comes out just before the election. was entitled to not have to ask that question. this was donald trump not wanting the risk. and that's everything. no one should be able to have to answer that.

they were entitled to this not being the case, that there be transparency, that there be honesty. all of these facts are ones that at the end of the day you can easily say to yourself, okay, this paints a picture of a really inveterate corrupt politician at a time which is way before -- rewind the clock to we have all lived through his presidency. we have lived through his embracing january 6th defendants who have been convicted after due process. we have embraced so much that's wrong in terms of what we have seen. this was at the outset, where this was the -- this is the precarious moment. remember, right after the "access hollywood" tape, within like essentially a new york minute, you have all of the wikileaks stuff coming out against john podesta. so that was all this was how critical it was to what was going on at that moment.

>> remember what it says about our culture, too. billy bush, donald trump. one gets $20 million to go away. the other gets elected president. >> yeah, there's so much about the culture that we have to deal with. we have to reckon with. the other thing is, trump thought it would sink his campaign, but it didn't. i mean, there's that. another break for us. we'll be right back. k. n' torque. what? the dodge hornet r/t... the totally torqued-out crossover. (♪♪) (♪♪) try dietary supplements from voltaren, for healthy joints. when you put in the effort, but it starts to frizz... you skipped a step. tresemmé silk serum. use before styling for three days of weightlessly smooth hair that frizz can't beat.

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backworts in the back seat, diaper bag, getting all the stuff out. and a guy walked up on me. and said to me, leave trump alone. forget the story. and then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, a beautiful little girl. it would be a shame if something happened to her mom. then he was gone. >> you took it as a direct threat? >> absolutely. i was rattled. i remember going into the workout class and my hands were shaking so much i was afraid i was going to drop her. >> stormy daniels. she's on the witness list. >> i think something that's useful for people to remember is in many ways she's almost an exhibit. it's the fact of her having these allegations. it's actually not necessary for the jury to find that she in fact had this tryst with former president. that is actually not required. the same way as katie talked about, the doorman, it's not necessary that the doorman's story be true. it's the issue of wanting to suppress it.

having said that, many jurors may find she's quite credible and she has, to keep this kid friendly show, she has kind of the receipts in terms of being able to prove it. >> and triggered by her receipts. >> exactly. it's not really necessary. it will be interesting to see how the defense deals with that. they could leave that alone and say, you don't really know about the false business records. you're just -- you have this limited window into the scheme, but it's an important window. >> i mean, speaking of windows. i hope we have a window on trump's face when all these witnesses testify, because to your point, these are his people. jeremy, andrew, katie, thank you so much. another break for us. we'll be right back. it's lying dormant, waiting... and could reactivate. shingles strikes as a painful, blistering rash that can last for weeks. and it could wake at any time.

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